Is there a link between chess and madness? It's a reasonable question, since the game has attracted more than its share of oddballs and troubled souls - some of them extremely troubled. It's also a question relevant to "Pawn Sacrifice," a gripping study of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player ever.

The story, which benefits from Edward Zwick's old-school direction, charts Fischer's simultaneous rise to global fame by winning the 1972 world championship and his decline into rage and paranoia. As Fischer, Tobey Maguire is outstanding at capturing the man's intensity, arrogance and single-mindedness, while ensuring that the audience stops short of dismissing him as a talented screwball.

What drove Fischer? In a sequence set during his childhood in Brooklyn, we learn that he grew up in a milieu that idealized communism and that led his mother to be placed under FBI scrutiny. From an early age, chess was Fischer's retreat and his calling. He was thoroughly convinced that he could be the best player in the world at a time when the Soviet Union dominated chess. Eventually, his target became the reigning No. 1 player, Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber).

The Soviets had a huge apparatus supporting their chess program, and there was nothing like it in the United States. Fischer is soon contacted by a mysterious lawyer (Michael Stuhlbarg) who says he represents unidentified people who would consider it a Cold War victory to see the Soviets humiliated by the American genius. Money becomes available, and Fischer begins his speedy rise through the ranks, with a meager support team: the lawyer and a priest, the Rev. William Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard), a chess player of considerable talent himself.

Fischer is convinced that the Soviet chess juggernaut uses underhanded tactics to win. He begins issuing demands: He wants a better hotel and more money, and demands that the press be kept at bay. Lombardy has known Fischer for a long time and fears for the young man's mental condition. The climax of the film is a war of nerves between Fischer and Spassky, culminating in the sixth game of the 1972 match, a game still revered in the chess world.

The movie concludes with some footage of the real-life Fischer, who by the end of his life had alienated even his most ardent supporters. He dropped out of the chess world and began issuing sickening rants against the Jews, the U.S. and Israeli governments, the chess establishment and other perceived persecutors.

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Credit goes to Maguire (and director Zwick) for making Fischer's mental collapse both inevitable and heartbreaking. They resist the temptation to get righteous about Fischer's fall; it's an act of kindness for them to acknowledge it without rubbing our faces in it.

"Pawn Sacrifice" avoids easy answers: Early on, you do root for Fischer, both as a child and later when he is playing David to the Soviet Goliath. And as reprehensible as Fischer becomes, in the end the viewer's main feeling is likely to be sadness.